


'Til it's Christmas in the Room

by leigh57



Category: 24
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 22:12:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leigh57/pseuds/leigh57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But she pulls back (eyes too shiny, voice too taut) and says, “Come on. Let’s get some coffee and a scone or something.”</p><p>And he knows he’s lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. yes the heart should always go one step too far

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of Christmasy ficlets, all in the same post S7 AU. The master prompt post is [here on LJ](leigh57.livejournal.com/139488.htmlf). Giant thanks to adrenalin211, lowriseflare, and dealan311 for beta comments and support.
> 
> Story title is from the Sufjan Stevens song. Chapter titles are from 'Go Places,' by The New Pornographers.

The hard part, it turns out, isn’t wanting not to die.

It’s wanting to _live_.

She does all the 'right' things.

Up and showered by nine (lipstick and mascara even if she's not going anywhere) so she won’t pull the covers over her head and keep hiding, bran flakes with skim milk (on weekends she cheats with Cocoa Puffs, feels decadent), outdoor walks regardless of weather, ten minutes of meditation to soothing new-age music before seven and a half hours of sleep.

A walking checklist of therapist-pleasing perfection.

She’s still stuck in the middle.

She thinks about the song.

Subtracts the "with you" part.

It’s December 17, assault of sparkling red and green when she just wants to buy tampons, perky Christmas music blaring from all the directions at once.

She huddles into the corner of her couch (clutch of hot chocolate in her cold hand); the wall behind her vibrates with bizarre hard-rock holiday tunes courtesy of the frat boys next door.

It’s pathetic as fuck and she knows it, but she can’t think of a single reason to smile.

*******

She saved all seven of Jack’s messages, but she’s listened to each one only once.

Now she plays them back in sequence, volume cranked high to drown out AC/DC creating unfortunate slant rhyme.

The first time, each soft syllable felt like stabbing.

Now, all she hears in the low, velvety-carved words is worry.

Concern.

_Understanding._

She jams her thumb down on the call button before she can talk herself out of it again.

Edgy and nervous, she jumps at the click that signals connection.

And he doesn’t say, _I’ve called you seven times. Why the hell didn’t you pick up?_ or, _That wasn’t quite what I meant by ‘Try and make choices you can live with.’_

He says her name.

_Renee._

His voice feels like a fresh-from-the-dryer down comforter after you’ve been standing in a blizzard wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

“Hi,” is all she manages.

"I'm so glad you called," he says. But he sounds out of breath and she can tell he's keeping his voice low. There's noise in the background, conversation and the throb of music.

"Are you at Kim's?" she blurts. "We can talk another time."

"I'm in PT. _Shit_. I can't believe-" He hesitates. She closes her eyes and just listens to him breathe. "Can I call you back in half an hour? Wait, twenty-six minutes."

Then he laughs.

Barely, but the sound is so unfamiliar and lovely that she wants to record it, play it back when it's 3 a.m. and she's about to lose a staring contest with a bottle of Absolut.

"Of course. Take your time."

"Twenty-six minutes," he repeats. "Bye."

The smile she couldn't find before the phone call sneaks up from behind, taps her shoulder.

She glances at her watch.

 _Twenty-five_.


	2. play hearts, kid, they work well

Rushed and fumble-fingered, he changes his shirt three times. The black thermal Henley wins, because his cab is waiting and he can’t undo the fucking button.

*******

On the plane, he lands a window seat, declines the peanuts and the drink.

Next to him, a rumpled forty-something guy plays chess with his preteen son, who slouches with practiced attitude inside a green Under Armour hoodie.

Jack smiles to himself, thinks of Kim.

*******

Even in the surging sea of people washing through Dulles on December 23rd, he can’t miss her -- deep red hair that reflects the light and a halo of sadness that threatens to escalate the tremor in his hand until he drops his duffel.

Determined, he grips the bag harder and walks in her direction.

She turns her head when he’s ten paces away. A nervous grin illuminates her face, but it’s her eyes that sock his gut (no warning to let him tighten the muscles, minimize the damage), make it hard for him to keep moving forward.

He remembers how they looked the day he met her, the light that flickered there.

Before they were haunted.

He’s seen more than enough to know this damage isn’t the reversible kind.

“Jack,” she breathes out like a sentence, that softened K that’s unique to her. “You look _terrific_.”

She’s standing, uncertain; he surprises the shit out of himself by being the one to drop his bag and wrap her in his arms. She smells like cinnamon, feels like gratitude he can touch. “So do you,” he manages, despite his protesting vocal cords. The hammer of her heart against his chest makes him smile.

As he holds her (she’s lost weight, air in his arms), he wishes a hundred things, not the least of which is that she won’t feel him shaking.

The last time he touched her (hand on the bone of her cheek, thumb wet with her tears), he’d given no thought to the risks.

Imminent death, a consequence-free environment.

Now, _all_ he can think of are the risks.

One more person who stretches his heart.

One more person for him to destroy.

But she pulls back (eyes too shiny, voice too taut) and says, “Come on. Let’s get some coffee and a scone or something.”

And he knows he’s lost.

*******

The two hours of his layover roll by in what feels like ten minutes.

Stumbling at first, the conversation gathers momentum until she’s laughing sometimes, between sips of pumpkin-spice latte and bites of iced lemon pound cake. (When she offers him a corner, it’s all he can do to make himself take it; he wants her to eat _the entire thing_. He also drinks every last sip of the gingerbread latte she recommended, even though it’s too sweet for him and he would have pitched it if she weren’t sitting across the table, rubbing the edge of a Starbucks napkin between her fingers.)

The PA system blasts his flight number; he’s never been so ambivalent about a boarding announcement.

“That’s you!” The manufactured enthusiasm in her words echoes while she throws all the trash onto a tray, concentrating on each crumb.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” she exclaims, finally turning to face him. She rummages in her shoulder bag, hands him a small box wrapped in smiling snowmen who wear red and green scarves and ski over a snow-covered background.

“It’s for Teri,” she adds quickly, nervous eyes darting. He’s pretty sure the explosion he hears in his head is a land mine detonating under his last line of defense. “It’s probably all wrong,” she adds. “I have no idea how to shop for kids.”

“She’ll love it.” He tries to weight each word with conviction. “But you didn’t have to-”

“I _wanted_ to,” she interrupts, looking straight at him. “It was the first Christmasy thing I did this season,” she admits, with a self-deprecating eyeroll for emphasis.

They call his flight number again.

“You’d better go.” She picks up her bag and stands very straight.

“Yeah.”

Before the better-judgment demons can grab him by the collar, he leans in to kiss her cheek, close as he dares to the edge of her mouth.

When he steps back, her face is hot pink.

He clears his throat. “Can I call you once I get settled at Kim's?”

She nods, hand tight on the strap of her bag, five white circles.

*******

Back on the plane, he muffles what _has_ to be a ridiculous smile and wedges his duffel under the seat, declines the peanuts and the drink (again).

For probably the three hundredth time since he bought his plane ticket (click of his shaky finger on the ‘purchase’ button almost unreal), he imagines Teri's face when she wakes up wide-eyed on Christmas morning, pictures her in her Rudolph pajamas, stuffing her face with cinnamon rolls.

He thinks of Renee, laughing with lemon icing on her lip.

No better gift she could locate in this universe than those two hours and the knowledge that tonight, he’ll call her.

And she'll pick up.

************


	3. like magic, play aces

++++++++++++

She goes running at 5:45 on Christmas morning, fingers crossed that the overloaded teaspoon of brown sugar she stirred into her coffee will power her through four or five miles, because it’s _way_ too early to eat.

It’s darker than she expected and _cold_ (apparently even the damn D.C. weather has been seized with the Christmas spirit). The air burns her lungs when she breathes, sharp and stinging. She yanks the sleeves of her hoodie down over her gloved fingertips and tries to concentrate on the rhythm, to make her mind blank until there’s nothing but her shoes on the pavement, the wind on her cheeks, and the pulse of Missy Elliott on her iPod.

It works, mostly.

The neighborhood’s quiet at first -- no light in the bay-windowed townhouses, frosted cars motionless and cold in their numbered spaces.

But by the time she’s completed her loop (five miles and change; she’s proud of herself for not caving to the dark side and writing a shorter run off to the holiday blahs), two houses are lit up.

In the first, all she can see is a sleepy-looking black lab puppy peering out the window. The air from his nose makes a foggy circle on the glass.

She only catches a glimpse of the second before she forces herself to look away, but that glimpse is more than enough. A Christmas tree strung with blinking multicolored lights, every inch of it packed with miscellaneous ornaments.

(There’s an angel at the top that looks kind of like an anime character, but somehow it still manages to be magic.)

Kneeling in front of the tree are two little boys in those fuzzy footie pajamas, holding gifts close to their faces and listening, as if the presents might suddenly decide to speak.

It takes her brain a second to access the word for the unfamiliar throb of heat in her chest that has nothing to do with cardiovascular exertion. When she finally finds it, it’s a mini-epiphany.

Anticipation.

She’s looking forward to something.

++++++++++++

Back in the canned radiant heat of her apartment building, she turns left out of the elevator, cursing under her breath when her headphones tangle as she tries to pull them off. When she finally unknots the thin black cords, she glances up and stops short, fingers clenched around her key.

Sitting in front of her door is a Christmas tree.

It’s maybe two feet tall, wrapped in a spiral of silver tinsel garland, nestled in a red and green ceramic pot with snowflakes on it. Glazed gingerbread men and candy canes hang from the tree’s tiny branches, and there’s a string of white lights encircling the greenery, cord waiting to be plugged in.

The needles tickle her fingers as she reaches for the note and pulls it out of the envelope with clumsy cold hands.

She sees Jack’s still-shaky scrawl, realizes she’s been holding her breath.

_You said you hadn’t done anything Christmasy. This was the best I could come up with on thirty-six hours’ notice. If you hate it, throw it out. (It looked good in the online catalog.)_

_I’m so glad you met me at the airport._

_Jack_

She chews the inside of her cheek and reads the note three more times, her mind bouncing from thought to thought like one of those damn Lotto balls. It occurs to her, in a rush of aggregated evidence (seven phone messages, plane ticket arranged just so he could have coffee with her at DCA, his mouth on her cheek, so close to her lips, the sparkling tree in front of her), that maybe this goes beyond concern about his responsibility for collateral damage.

But maybe he’s just sorry that she’s alone for the holidays. Maybe he-

Her phone vibrates her hip through the pocket of her hoodie; she almost jumps. Managing to extract it, she studies the display.

 _Jack_.

She’s set his caller ID to a pic of winter sunset in the mountains -- pink, orange, and violet glowing off white.

The picture’s calming.

His name isn’t.

“Hi.”

“I didn’t wake you up, did I? You said you were planning to run, and-”

“You didn’t wake me up.” She’s still breathing fast (the run, it’s just the run). “I love the tree.”

“Yeah?” She can _hear_ him grinning, and it’s the strangest sensation, because she’d only seen him halfway smile twice before their impromptu airport snack. “I couldn’t decide between that and the Sees pumpkin spice lollipops.”

“You made the right call.”

“Well not-” He pauses, and it clicks before he says another word.

“You bought those, too, didn’t you?” She peers around the back of the tree and yeah, there’s the Sees logo. The smile she can’t stop almost hurts her cold cheeks.

“Only in case you hated the tree.” She can hear him exhaling. “Pumpkin’s more seasonally neutral.”

“Why are you awake? It’s like four thirty your time.” She holds the phone with her shoulder and fumbles the key into the lock, shoving the door open with her knee.

Jack’s quiet for a second. “I guess I haven’t figured out how to stay asleep. Here.”

She almost says, _I haven’t figured out how to stay asleep anywhere,_ but she bites that one back and substitutes, “Is Teri all excited?”

He laughs, and her face doesn’t feel as cold anymore. “She’s bouncing off the walls. Literally. Kim had to threaten her with being skipped by Santa to get her into bed.”

Somehow, Renee uses her foot to maneuver the tree far enough inside the door to shut it. She tosses her gloves on the counter. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.” She surveys her silent, empty apartment and thinks about the comfortable chaos of Christmas from another lifetime -- Andy Williams too loud from the speakers, the crunch of wrapping paper and cardboard, her dad cursing under his breath when he burned his fingers carving the turkey. “I’m so happy you get to be with Kim this year.”

“Me, too.” He pauses, but she lets the quiet sit, waits for him to fill in more blanks. “It still feels like a movie though. Like maybe . . . it’s not real.” The last few syllables are very soft.

“That’ll go away,” she says instantly, and she only realizes in the beat after how true the words feel.

“Hey.” He clears his throat and pauses. “Are you doing anything for New Year’s Eve?”

“Yeah, hiding.” She opens the cupboard, shoving aside a box of Special K so she can reach the Quik. “Watching Netflix. Probably eating half a bag of jalapeno Cheetos. What about you?”

“Can I bring you takeout?”

Puzzled, she squeezes her hand into a nervous ball. “Won’t you still be in L.A.?”

“I have an appointment with Dr. Macer on Tuesday. She couldn’t reschedule. But if you’d rather be alone-”

“No, it’s not that. I just-” Her heart is beating faster now than at any point during her run. She cycles through a jumbled pro and con list regarding what she’s about to say, but all the mental noise is trumped by the fact that she really, really needs to know _exactly_ what’s happening here.

“Jack, listen. I didn’t get you a present.”

“I wasn’t expecting-”

“I thought about it. A _lot_. I had seven or eight tabs open on my computer.” She drags in only enough air to let her keep going. “But I didn’t want you to think I was making assumptions about-” She stops, stares at the red chapped crack in her knuckle.

“About what?”

“Well I didn’t know if you were thinking-” Goddammit. She’s never had any idea how to do this. “Is this New Year’s Eve thing a-” With all the fucking words in the English language, there isn’t a synonym in sight. “A date?”

It’s not possible that he’s silent for more than a second, but it feels like a fourth of forever. He sounds both nervous and amused when he says, “I can’t even remember the last time I used that word.” Then he adds, so quiet that it’s hard for her to hear, “I’d like it to be, yeah.” Excitement and terror twist through her. “But if you don’t want to-”

She cuts him off, trying to slam all the conviction she can find into a few words. “I _do_. Want to. Takeout sounds great.” She presses her hand into her jittery stomach. “I’ll make dessert. Do you like tiramisu?”

(Jesus Christ, where the hell did that come from? She hasn’t made tiramisu since she was seventeen, trying to impress Nathan Jackowski, who was 6’2” and captain of the soccer team but still used words like ‘serendipitous’ and ‘quintessential.’)

“I’m sure it’s great, but you could buy chocolate ice cream and I’d be happy.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay.” She’s pretty sure there’s no scale that could measure her gratitude for the way he just . . . says things.

“I’ll call you tonight.” His words have warm edges.

“Bye.” For a few minutes she stands there, cold hands clutching the phone, staring at the screen even after the display goes dark. Eventually, she remembers that she was trying to make hot chocolate.

Grinning, she watches the glow of the lights on her new tree while she stirs the milk in a figure eight.

Inside her hoodie, her thumb traces the rough corner of Jack’s note, back and forth until it’s bent into a curve.

++++++++++++


End file.
